


the college days

by 25postcards



Series: never simple, never easy [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: College, College Student Stiles, Deputy Derek, Derek POV, F/M, Gen, M/M, POV Alternating, Sad Derek Hale, Stiles POV, implied sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-18
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-12-03 16:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11536185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/25postcards/pseuds/25postcards
Summary: incomplete continuation of flower verse.





	the college days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreakHour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreakHour/gifts).



> maybe i'll pick it back up but this entire segment was supposed to focus on stiles and derek and their relationships with other people, because i think it's integral on them getting together later on.

**AUGUST**

 

The thing is, leaving Beacon Hills for college wasn’t easy. He spent weeks packing and repacking things, counting to ten, running his hands down his arms and legs and making them move, flex, all on his own until he felt like himself again. 

It’d been a thing. A thing he doesn’t even tell Scott about, because they’re roommates for the year and he’s going to find out what a fucking neurotic crapbag Stiles has become post mind-coitus with the nogitsune anyway. 

And sure, maybe he’s planted a few hundred flowers, dug his own hands into dirt and made things come alive, spent more time with Derek alone while planting flowers than anyone else has spent alone with Derek. And maybe he was good for a while. Because having Derek for company was a challenge sometimes. Imagine all the silences he had to fill. 

And all that has made him better, but not all the way. He’s accepted that as The Truth. Like he’s never going to be 100 percent okay and he knows that’s supposed to be Okay according to most therapy books. 

So moving out of Beacon was huge for him. And so was the year that Derek and him stopped talking cause that was hard too, suddenly being yanked away from the awkward security blanket Derek had become. Like, what? Derek didn’t actually like him like that and it was a huge mistake on all parts? Shocker. 

And lacrosse, school, teaching Malia a crash course in “So You’re a Werecoyote Trying To Be Human Again” was all fine and took time. He’s learned things, he’s grown. He’s still not that good. 

All okay.

Stiles slowly, achingly, sets the last box down in his half full dorm room. His dad is nailing something up on his wall so he can feel useful and manly while Scott yammers away in his ear.

“You have to show me the whole room,” Scott says.

Stiles snorts into the speaker. “It’s not exactly the Kardashian Mansion. It’s smaller than my closet at home, I’m pretty sure.”

“I don’t care! We’re going to be living there for a year. I wanna know the space.”

Stiles shrugs and switches Scott to video, and because he’s an asshole, shakes the phone around until Scott yells at him to stop. Then he pans the whole room, all 2x4 of it.

“I call dibs on the bed by the door.”

“I figured, jackass. All yours,” Stiles says, jumping on the bed he already assumed would be his. It’s not a real bed, like he expected, so he bounces way higher and almost flops back onto the floor. 

“What the hell is,” he scrambles up, lifting up the shitty sheets to reveal and blue, plastic air mattress that’s deflating.

“Holy hell, this is gonna be the worst,” Stiles laughs into the phone. 

“Nuh uh. It’s gonna be the best, dude. I can’t wait to get down there.”

\--

 

His dad and him go for a traditional Stilinski all out feast at an In-N-Out. 

“You gonna be okay here on your own, kid?”

“Yeah, I’ll be totally fine,” Stiles lies and his dad cuffs him on the head.

“I know you don’t like to be alone. Scott will be here by next week and I’m still gonna be in town until Thursday, at least. I took a few off so we could explore LA. It’s been awhile since I’ve been down here.”

Blake, the RA, pops his head back into the room, a bustle of college students passing by him. “Sorry to interrupt again, Mr. Stilinski, but you really have to go. The dorms open back up at 9 am tomorrow.”

His dad nods, then heads to the door.

“See you tomorrow, Stiles.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you dad.” 

With that, the door gently clicks shut. Stiles exhales and turns his attention back on the boxes that still need to be unpacked. That’s a nice distraction for about thirty minutes until he realized he barely has any belongings and he’s very, very alone. 

There’s a cork board right above his bed that he decides to focus on. There are so many things he can post up, like his favorite band posters and a few nice photos from his last birthday he really loves. But for some reason he doesn’t. He pulls back, sitting on his heels, then digs through a small bag full of his toiletries until the metal of the pin brushes against his thumb. He pulls it out and observes it. It’s still the same, tacky Oregon pin Derek bought him over a year ago. It has some toothpaste smeared in the corner, so he wipes it with the bottom of his shirt, then pulls off the metal back. He sticks it, straight in the center of the board. That brightens up the brown cork considerable with the ugly drawn yellow flowers cheerily lighting up. 

“That’s not weird at all, Stiles. Sure, pin up the thing that Derek gave you. Not sentimental at all.”

He tacks up his class schedule next to it to feel less weird about it.

\---

 

The day before Scott’s supposed to arrive, Stiles has a breakdown. 

It’s just that most of the time, he doesn’t feel whole. He doesn’t feel like he belongs in his own body. That’s what happened to him after the nogitsune. His jokes feel full of air. He feels like he’s on autopilot and then when he comes back to himself, he can feel everything. Like every blistering thought, every cell, every golgi apparatus, every neuron firing are going to consume him and it’s frightening. 

And days like these, he can’t even sleep, even if he wants to. Even if he wants to shut down or maybe not exist until the feeling goes away. He tries to shut his eyes, but all he does is shiver under the covers, under the weight of being who he is, which is to say: very, very fucked up.

Being with Malia helped. On some levels, she understands him best. Derek’s a heavy guilty, but Malia and Stiles are a whole different kind. It’s the kind that makes you want to tear yourself apart. He’d wake, or not really wake, but not sleep with her glued to his back. And she’d tell him to go to sleep, like it was just the thing to do and he’d try to listen. It worked, sometimes. Or maybe it was exhaustion. And if it didn’t, then she’d climb on top of him and kiss his neck until he got distracted enough for them to distract him even further with sex. 

Their first time was-- he can’t even really remember it. He just knew that she was there, in her stark simpleness and wild, intangible beauty. Her sculpted body, naked, because she hated clothes. They were confining, so she didn’t wear them if dad wasn’t home. And he was cool with it, boner aside. He got that it made her comfortable and that he was there, and she was instinctual. 

“So you haven’t had sex before,” she said, straight-forwardly that always sounded worse coming from anyone else. He stared at her, gape mouthed, trying to focus on the middle school algebra he was trying to teach her. 

“Well, no.” 

Not technically. Sometimes it feels like that night with Derek was a dream. Did Derek kiss him for real? Did he say all that stuff and touch the lines of Derek’s body and feel that heat? He can’t remember what Derek taste likes or what he smelled like or if his lips were dry or soft. It just doesn’t feel real.

Malia tilted her head, staring at his chest, eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” she responded. “I want to,” she said. 

“I don’t know if that’s the best idea,” though his dick was fully on board. 

“My body wants it and I trust you.” 

“But sex is more than that.”

“Why?”

“There’s supposed to be love,” he protested weakly.

“I love you.”

“In a brotherly way or a romantic way.”

“In a way that feels that it’d be okay to have sex with you,” she said, snorting.

“It’s a lot, Malia.”

“Your body wants it too. I don’t know why, but it seems like you’re whole body is vibrating with tension. Like prey.”

“How can you see that?”

“If it makes you feel better, I remember the princess stories my mom used to tell me and little sister. I remember wanting to be a princess and having a knight in shining armor. I remember being curious about what kissing was like and how sex worked. This isn’t just how my body feels, but my brain,” she stopped, frustrated. “My mind wants to know too. I remember what it feels like to want that stuff when I was younger.”

“So it’s not just sex?”

“It’s not just sex,” she confirmed. 

He paused. “But it could be. Just sex. I know Scott is that all consuming love type. He won’t ever go down on a girl, just for sex. He has to love her, he has to know her soul or whatever. I don’t think I’m ready for that type of sex. I don’t want someone to love me that much.”

“I promise not to love you that much,” she added, teasingly, taking a step closer until her breasts brushed against his shirt. She straddled him in the computer chair. 

“So it could be just sex but not just sex," he said again, breath hitching. 

“That was really confusing and you should take off your pants now.”

He obliged. 

He wonders if he had this conversation with Derek, if he would get it. If he could handle them being, just sex. And then it feels like someone dropped a bucket of cold water on him when he really thinks about it, because everything that happened with Derek is not sex and a little too close to all consuming love. 

With Malia, it was clumsy and not good. There was fumbling and awkwardness. He came too early and made it up to Malia by tonguing her clit until she came and it that was good. It worked, sort of. The tension eased and they spent the rest of the night curled around each other and for once he felt sort of normal. A sort of normal teenager who lost his virginity, finally.

He stopped feeling like he’s a comet covered in skin, ready to impact a planet. So they used sex, when it was hard to talk, when he couldn’t sleep, when she couldn’t sleep, when they wanted to and just because. Outside of the two of them, no one understood it. 

Scott gave him these side glances and happy little smiles when Stiles sat at the lunch table with his arm around Malia, just because it felt natural to. Seeing Scott’s bright light on him like that made him feel like maybe this is always what he should’ve be doing. Maybe he should think about kissing Malia’s hair more, or all the strange romanticisms he fantasized about Lydia. He spent so much of freshman year wondering what Lydia Martin’s palms felt.

But he didn’t think about Malia, all the time. He told her this, one night and she shrugged.

“Why aren’t you mad?”

“If you thought about me all the time, how are we ever going to solve that case. You have a lot of red yarn up there.”

He thought he could fall in love with Malia. Maybe he has. It’d be so easy. 

Stile sighs, giving up on the idea of sleep. He messes around on the internet for a while, then checks his phone. He knows if he calls now, she’d pick up.

He falls into some restless sleep eventually and wakes to the smell of donuts and Scott sitting on his side of the room, tapping quietly at his laptop. Groggily, Stiles lifts his head, one eye peering at his best friend across the short distance. He could probably reach out and hit Scott’s knee if he wanted to.

“What time is it?”

“11. Got here two hours ago, but I didn’t want to wake you up. Mom says hi.”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Stiles says, flopping back down on his pillow. He rolls over on his side and yawns, rubbing the crust from this eyes.

“Dude, it’s fine. You smelled exhausted and I wanted to chill. This whole place is pretty overwhelming werewolf wise.”

Stiles looks over at him, eyebrows raised.

“You gonna be okay?”

Scott nods, smiling a little. “Yeah. There are probably more werewolves here than I have ever encountered in my life.”

Scott takes a bite of his donut and offers Stiles a blueberry cake donut, his favorite. Stiles shakes his head, and pulls himself out of bed, gesturing that he’s going to brush his teeth and shower. Scott nods without looking up from his computer and sets the donut back down in the box. 

The boy’s bathrooms are a little gross, but Stiles feels better, rejuvenated after a quick shower. He shoves the blueberry donut into his maw, wincing at the minty blueberry taste.

“I need coffee.”

“Okay, I’ll come with you,” Scott says, shutting his laptop. He jumps up, smiling and getting giddy for the walk around tour. 

They make their way to the coffee shop where Stiles’ new friend is nowhere to be seen. After a cup, he regains energy, grinning at Scott who’s feeding him a dorky grin himself.

“College!” Scott bellows on the steps of the campus. Stiles laughs, looping an arm around him and joins in.

They amble to the bookstore where Scott makes offended, hurt noises at the prices. Stiles promises to shark Amazon Student for their books and veers him to the dining hall instead. They get their respective piles of Chinese junk food and find an empty booth near the large windows of the caf.

“How’s home?”

“Good. Liam was totally sad and mopey, but wouldn’t admit it. Malia says she misses you.”

“Heard from Lydia?” Scott shakes his head, frowning. Lydia had pulled away from the pack after Stiles’ birthday, not telling anyone she got accepted MIT or that she’d be moving across the country away from everyone else. Stiles knows it bothers Scott more than he lets on. 

Stiles understands why she did it. Losing Allison had hit Lydia harder than Scott or Stiles.

Scott and Stiles hang out all day, it feels almost like pre-werewolf times. An abundances of snacks and chips lay between them while Scott destroys things on video games and Stiles commentates. Scott’s the first to yawn, closing his laptop and slipping his warm feet from under Stiles thighs. 

Stiles gathers all their trash into a bag and tosses it into a corner to deal with later and flops onto his own bed. 

 

\---

 

Midway through his first day of college, Stiles phone vibrates against his leg while he’s squinting at the projected power point their professor is going through.

 

He looks down, just to check.

 

 _1 Notification_  
**Derek Hale**  
text message

 

Throughout the rest of the lecture, the phone burns into his skin, but he’s determined not to look at it until after class.

 

 **> Derek Hale**  
LA pack contacted me. I gave them your email address 

 

 **Stiles Stilinski <**  
oh ok so no code red?

 

Derek doesn’t respond for a few hours, which means he’s probably back on shift now.

 

Stiles comes into the resident halls, weaving and dodging around the other residents until he gets to his open door. Stiles shuts the door, dropping his backpack next to his bed.

 

“Hey, Derek texted me-”

“-about the Lucinda pack? Yeah, I got the same one.” 

“Oh,” Stile says, trying not to feel disappointed. He’s barely talked to Derek all year. It’s stupid. 

Scott sits up from his bed. “Their alpha, Marianna, called me to set up a meeting. She seemed nice over the phone. I guess one of her kids goes here with us.”

“You’re gonna need me there?”

“Of course. It’ll probably be fine. Territory stuff, but I’m not too worried. It’d be nice to have at least one pack member with me. Kira said she’ll swing by with us since UCI doesn’t start till next week. She wants to see the Hollywood sign.”

“Cool.”

 

\-----

 

Going to the Lucinda Pack dinner is the best thing that’s ever happened to Stiles’ life. Mostly because there’s a gorgeous boy named Alex with soft blonde hair, who bites his lip every time Stiles looks over at him. Plus seeing Kira again is the best and she eases the tension out of the entire dinner with her cute dimple overload. The Lucinda's are nice and kind. Such an old pack, they aren’t worried about another alpha in their territory at all.

 

After dinner, Alex walks Stiles to the front door and stares him down with his green, green eyes.

“So Stiles, do you have a phone number I can have?”

“I actually only have a pager from the 90s. Only for really important stuff,” Stiles bites out nervously and Alex lets out this thunderous, fully body laugh. No one ever thinks Stiles’ quips are this funny and it makes him feel powerful. Sexy, even. 

Alex grins at him, his full white teeth that should feel dangerous, but instead lights Stiles up from the inside. He takes Stiles’ hand and brushes them against his lips like in cheesy romcoms that Stiles secretly loves and taps a pattern to his palm.

“How good is your memory?”

“It’s excellent. Best in my class,” Stiles stutters out.

Alex grins again, the smile turning dopey and the patterns smooth out his palm into numbers. Stiles memorizes the numbers, and the feeling, and the way his heart beats off a tad, and the quick fire image he has of what it would be like if Derek ever took his hand and traced his number onto his palm, just like this strange boy is doing and how different it would be- but not for long because he repeats the numbers out loud and Alex is smiling at him, bright and full like the moon and Stiles forgets about Derek, a little.

“You got it.”

Stiles takes out his phone and taps in the numbers he just repeated at the same time Scott comes out of the front door with an armful of leftovers the rest of their hall will be jealous of. 

Scott raises his eyebrow at Stiles and bumps shoulders with him. They say good night and Stiles presses save into his phone and shoots out a dumb little text

 ** >Stiles Stilinski**  
it’s stiles. hope u don’t realize what a mistake this is gonna be

 **Alex Lucinda <**  
:) :) it won’t be!

 

Stiles grins the whole way home and Scott can’t stop shoving him and it feels really, really great.

 

\---  
Alex is tremendous and funny and thoughtful. The first week of them texting back and forth, Alex shows up at his dorms with Stiles’ favorite danish from the coffee shop because they’d been talking about it that morning. 

 

After class, daydreaming about sharing danishes with Alex, they hang out in the dorms. Scott sexiles himself, because he’s an awesome friend like that. They talk about the Marvel Cinema Universe for an hour before diving into two Iron Man’s and the Avengers and Alex ends up falling asleep on Stiles and it’s kind of adorable. He pets his hair until Alex stirs.

“Wow, sorry for falling asleep on you,” he mumbles sleepily. Stiles grins. 

“Dude, it’s totally fine. I kind of liked it. Is that weird?”

“No, but it’s pretty weird I fell asleep on you. Normally werewolves can’t do that around people who aren’t pack.”

“Huh,” Stiles says. “Well feel free to do it again.”

 

Alex smiles at him, the slow warm kind that makes Stiles’ face flush. Their faces are close enough that Stiles can admire every eyelash with every slow blink. “I really like you,” Alex says softly, like that’s just the sort of the thing college kids say to Stiles. 

 

“I like you too,” Stiles says and it doesn’t even feel like a lie. He does like Alex. He likes that he can talk about nerdy stuff and that he buys him danishes and draws his phone number on his hand and that he laughs, eyes crinkled at every one of Stiles’ lame jokes. “I really like you.”

 

**SEPTEMBER**

 

DEREK

 

Braeden crashes, literally, through the window of his living room and onto the refurbished coffee table he’d just completed last week. She’s bleeding heavily, rifle strapped to her back. It startles him. He wasn’t paying attention, too busy measuring flour for a simple pie crust. 

 

She laughs first, when she sees him, apron on and claws out because of the noise, and then she faints from lack of blood.

 

Whatever got her didn’t follow, but Derek tense tracks around his house a few times until he’s satisfied. He debates calling Scott, but he knows it’s no use, since he’s 8 hours away, asleep in his dorm bed.

Derek calls John instead, who then calls Melissa. They both come over, move Braeden to somewhere more stable, with equipment so Melissa can stop the bleeding and monitor her. Not the hospital, since apparently the last time Braeden was in town, she’d pulled an IV out of her arm and straggled away in hospital robes. 

 

When she wakes up, bleary eyed and a bag of blood draining into her, she cracks a smile at him.

 

“Better save a slice for me,” she says, like she didn’t just get slashed in the side and break his coffee table. He snorts and pretends like he remembers how to respond to these things and flirt back. 

“How about a half slice, just for breaking my table and window.”

 

“Collateral,” she shrugs, grinning at him and flutters her eyes closed.

 

He watches over her, then texts Malia and Liam to be on the lookout for anything. 

 

\--

 

It’s easy with Braeden. It’s black and white. 

 

“I like sex. I like eating food. I don’t mind hanging out. But don’t get attached, cause this isn’t what this is,” she had stated the first time she slept over.

 

She doesn’t like kids. She barely finds people tolerable. But she’s funny and good in bed and  
He wonders if it could always be this good and easy.

 

Braeden comes and goes, looking for leads on the desert wolf with the fire of someone who’s lost someone dear. He doesn’t ask, but sometimes she twists an invisible ring around her finger when she’s lost in thought.

 

Derek drops a plate of breakfast in front of her and she smiles at him, leaning up for a morning peck. It feels domestic, and for a moment he fantasizes about this being every day, not just days when she feels like it. He tamps it down, sits on his side and scrolls absently through police reports. 

 

“Thanks for the breakfast,” she says, biting neatly into a sausage.

 

“It was nothing,” he says, shrugging and returning to read a report about a few stolen cars. 

 

“I’m going back out on the road, so this will keep me fueled for the day,” she says, rubbing her eye and taking the hot mug of coffee with both hands. She looks sleepy, with her hair tied up in a messy bun. She’s wearing his shirt and no pants and it’s devastating. He has to remind himself that it’s not like that. He can’t do that again. 

 

He nods and she quirks an eyebrow.

 

“Man of words. Is that okay?”

 

“Why wouldn’t it be? You said not to get attached, so I’m not,” he bites out, even though she didn’t mention it. Even if this has nothing to do with it.

 

She sighs, and gets up, mug in hand.

 

“Seriously, Derek,” she rolls her eyes and pads to the fridge for the special girl scout’s creamer she likes. He never uses it. He bought it just for her, which should be a warning sign, but Derek never learns. 

 

“It’s a job. And it’s important to me. I can feel myself getting closer and I may be out of town for a few weeks, so…,” she says, dropping the sentence off. He turns to her, watching her pour too much creamer into her coffee. She stirs with her finger, like the heat doesn’t bother her. 

 

“I thought I would let you know, since we’re friends.”

 

He bites down the ugly word, because friends don’t fuck, but he gets it. Why she doesn’t want attachments. He wishes he could be that way.

 

“I think, we should stay that way. I don’t think I can do this.”

 

“I agree,” she says almost immediately, making him flinch. “It isn’t like,” she sighs again. “I like you too much, Derek. It’s getting to be a problem for me. I’m finding it harder and harder to leave.” 

 

She takes a sip of her coffee while he rehearses “then don’t leave” in his head.

 

“This is all I know now. Chasing down the desert wolf and living in danger. I can pretend that I can settle down, but I’d never be happy, knowing she’s out there.”

 

He stops her with a hand.

 

“I get it.”

 

“I know you do.”

 

They stare at each other and he walks over, running her fingers through his hair that’s curling over the nape of his neck. He needs a haircut. “You need a haircut,” she says out loud for him, like she’d just read his mind. He smiles, a touch bitter. A touch wry and she sighs again. She leans down, gives him one more, long, lingering kiss. 

 

“Bye Derek. Take care of yourself.” 

 

He doesn’t watch her pack all of her things and leave.


End file.
